1. Field of the Invention
The invention is related to the field of disk drive systems, and in particular, to a drive control integrated circuit that performs robust testing on the disk drive without host computer input.
2. Statement of the Problem
Host computers store data on disk drives. The disk drive industry is extremely competitive, so the cost and reliability of disk drives are critically important to industry success. Robust testing is required to ensure the reliability of a disk drive.
Unfortunately, robust testing also increases the cost of the disk drive.
A disk drive operates in response to commands from a host computer. Past testing methods have emulated these host commands to simulate field conditions in a robust manner. Unfortunately, expensive test systems and labor were required to interconnect the disk drives with the test systems and perform the tests.
To avoid the cost of these test systems and labor, internal test software was developed for the disk drive. The test software was loaded into the disk drive and executed by a drive control integrated circuit. The internal software partially emulated field conditions, but did not simulate inputs to the host interface of the disk drive. Thus, the host interface and host interface processing were not tested.